Africana Folklore: History and Challenges

Prahlad, Anand.

Journal of American Folklore, Volume 118, Number 469, Summer 2005, pp. 253-270 (Article) Published by American Folklore Society DOI: 10.1353/jaf.2005.0035

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Sw. Anand Prahlad

Africana Folklore: History and Challenges

When I agreed to edit this special issue of JAF dedicated to Africana folklore, I did so with a commitment to certain ideals: primarily, that no other body of material has had more impact on the development of cultures in the western hemisphere than Africana folk traditions and, consequently, that this should lead to a highly developed eld of study that complements other conventional academic areas. Africana folklore should be a component of departments and programs in the humanities, whether as a part of folklore studies, anthropology, English, history, black studies, or other canonical elds. As others have argued, music, dance, language, religions, and other forms of Africana traditions play a much more central role in western identity than do many of the core texts in English, philosophy, and religious studies departments. Ironically, however, the canon in the western university and educational system at every level has more to do with the strong hold maintained by an imperialist agenda and a power structure steeped in colonial attitudes than it does with the actual relevance of so many texts and authors to understanding life in modern America. Challenges to the emergence of this area as a eld are immense. Despite the long history of scholarship in this area, for example, there is still a dearth of organizations or societies devoted to Africana folkloreno annual or semiannual conferences, or even an active section within the American Folklore Society. Whereas journals focusing on Africana folk traditions and culture exist in small countries such as Jamaica, there are none in the United States. Departmental, racial, and class politics have rendered it difcult for such developments to emerge. Without the sense of there being a eld of study, individual studies in this area are likely to seem random rather than in conversation with othershence, fewer debates to advance our thinking. One of the most difcult aspects of editing this special issue has been the decision about what to call it. The idea was originally proposed as a special issue in AfricanAmerican folklore, but almost immediately it became apparent that the term African American was problematic, as it has come to refer exclusively to descendants of the rst African slaves now living within the United States. Following the categories observed by federal agencies, scholars often purposely or inadvertently deny the status of African American to black immigrants or their children who arrived or were born in the United States after slavery and have since become citizens. But the profound connections in folklore among people of African descent dispersed throughout the New World argue for a more inclusive, organic rubric under which to be studied
Sw. Anand Prahlad is Professor of Folklore Studies and Literature, English Department, University of Missouri, Columbia Journal of American Folklore 118(469):253270 Copyright 2005 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

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and appreciated. African American, then, is far too limiting. But what term would be most accurate, least laden with problems of one kind or another? I considered many terms debated by those in humanity programs around the country: African Diaspora, Black Diaspora, Africana, New World African, and Afro-[ll in the nationality]. I nally decided on the term Africana because it suggests a transnational focus and might be the simplest way to evoke, in one word, the diverse traditions of the New World shared by people of African descent.

Historical Overview
More than any other issue, Africana folklore studies from the nineteenth through the early twenty-rst century has been consumed with the problem of identity. Whether as an overriding subtextshadowing the text that is rhetorically announced as the main focusor as an overt subject of examination, the topic of identity has been a consistent thread. Because the politics of race characterizes every society in which Africana people nd themselves, issues of identity have usually been positioned in respect to race. A close analysis of Uncle Remus, for example, reveals the extent to which this text primarily is engaged with multiple levels of racial identity. First, Joel Chandler Harriss creation of Uncle Remus ([1880] 1982) reects the white, postbellum, southern preoccupation with the unsettling mystery of black identity. In a fashion similar to the strategy of minstrelsy, Harris and others who drew portraits of Africana people relied on their own fantasies of the simple-minded, good-natured slaves who desired nothing more than to serve white people in creating images of black folk character. It is interesting to note that Uncle Remus has been conventionally discussed in terms of how the characters in the tales reect aspects of the slave psyche, when an equally legitimate reading would explore the book as a reection of Harriss psyche. One could easily argue that Uncle Remus, along with other collections written in this vein, represent literary examples of racial cross-dressing analogous to minstrelsy. Hence, such works are not just concerned with black people, but reveal as well a quandary with white identity. This would seem logical when one considers the fact that whiteness was historically constructed in relationship to European notions of blackness. The romantic portrayal of white Southerners as good-hearted, pure, and innocent is equally drawn from white wish fulllment, but nevertheless serves a critical function. Writings on Africana folklore have been marked by their close connections with the tides of world politics and social movements. They have furthermore been inuenced by difcult issues at the heart of mainstream western societies, such as moral questions raised by slavery and postcolonial relationships between people of European and African (or other ethnic descent) and the nature of humanness and nationhood. This has never been an area of research divorced from political debates of the time. Indeed, in as much as the black presence has consistently posed a political dilemma for colonial and postcolonial societies, this dilemma has been reected in folkloristic writings; hence, the evolution of Africana folklore studies can be mapped against the background of specic social/political moments in history. In the nineteenth century, most writings on Africana folklore were colonially in-

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spired, stereotypical renderings of black people. For instance, some of the major crises confronting American society during this period included moral issues concerning slavery and the humanity of black people and, subsequently, in the postslavery period, the white fear of freed blacks. Thus, folkloric images of African Americans during slavery usually worked in concert with propaganda advocating notions of black inferiority and justifying the institution of slavery. A common response to social and political advances of African Americans in the postbellum years, including northern migration and the emergence of black economic ventures, resulted in a reactionary depiction of the happy darky image that proliferated during slavery. This impulse was certainly a driving force in the creation of the most notable work from this period, Harriss Uncle Remus. As Robert Hemenway writes, Uncle Remus, an old time Negro reminds Southerners of what was good about slavery, becoming a wish-fulllment fantasy for a populace forced to deal each day with black people considerably less docile than the plantation darky (1982:21). Uncle Remus generated issues that have remained relevant in Africana folklore studies. For example, the collection contains contradictory elements of a very racist presentation of black people in concert with fairly accurate examples of proverbs and talesa paradox often encountered in folkloristic writings through the early twentieth century. The obsession with identity is reected in other kinds of folkloric writings of the nineteenth century, including works that move toward a more academically rigorous approach; for example, W. F. Allen, Charles P. Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrisons Slave Songs of the United States (1867). As Norman Whitten and John Szwed have noted, these writers were intent on making the Negro appear a pitiable creature in the hands of white slave owners. In their attempts to show the Negros primitive humanity and spirituality they carefully selected their material for social approval, presenting only sacred songs and songs of remorse. In effect, they created a new stereotype: that of humble, God-fearing, simple folk (1970:31). Other kinds of writing from this period include the occasional descriptions of Africana folk practices found in journals and other biographical accounts, such as Thomas Wentworth Higginsons Army Life in a Black Regiment ([1869] 1962). Finally, we cannot overlook the fact that the second issue of the Journal of American Folklore encouraged serious collection and study of African-American folklore, identied then as the lore of Negroes in the Southern States, and began publishing such materials shortly thereafter, largely printing folklore texts devoid of context and analysis (1888). Around the same time, journals publishing Africana folklore emerged in countries abroad, including Cuba, Jamaica, and Haiti; and in Europe, journals began including folk materials collected from the West Indies (e.g., Folk-lore in England). Identity became a more overtly stated concern in the period from the turn of the century through the 1940s, though the studies became more sophisticated. This rigor was largely inuenced by disciplines such as sociology and anthropology, the latter stemming from the strong, antiracist convictions of Franz Boas, who mentored three of the most important voices in Africana folklore in the early twentieth centuryMelville Herskovits, Zora Neal Hurston, and Elsie Clews Parsons. Boass inuence cannot be overemphasized, for it was his uncharacteristic (in academe) willingness to address social problemsthat is, racismthat set the tone for further

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studies by his students and inuenced studies in Africana folklore ever since. Problems of identity are engaged in different ways by authors from this period, but in most cases these engagements dialogue with assumptions made about white and black identity in the previous period. Of those writing on Africana folklore in this period, Hurstons and Herskovitss works evoked the most intense responses, both positive and negative. Hurston pioneered the celebratory portrayal of Africana folk by black writers themselves ([1935] 1978, [1938] 1990), her work eagerly consumed by predominantly white audiences and simultaneously attacked by black intellectuals who objected to Africana people being identied primarily on the basis of folk portraits. Herskovitss theoretical argument that African cultural traits survived among Africanderived groups in the New World generated intense debate, the subtext centering around issues of identity (1937, 1941). One could read the subtext of E. Franklin Fraziers passionate objection to Herskovitss position as a belief that those cultures of African heritages in the West Indies might still be considered African, but those of us in the United States certainly are notagain, note the focus on identity. Arguments to this effect can be made about the proliferation of collections published during this period, an archive of writings far too extensive to comment on here. The next most important historical event, after slavery, inuencing Africana folklore studies in the United States was northern migration. That the mass movement of blacks to northern cities was such a disruptive factor in studies of Africana folklore suggests some of the underlying assumptions made by folklorists at the time and reveals the quandary with black identity that became increasingly apparent. For example, the call by American folklorists in JAF at the turn of the twentieth century for a focus on the lore of Negroes in the Southern States, as well as the traditions of Mexicans and Indians, reects a romanticization of the rural and quaint folk and the tendency to view them as rich repositories of survivals that hold keys to our cultural past. The urban African American disturbed this paradigm. The misgivings of southern whites, thus, who lamented the passing of the good old days, were not entirely foreign to folklorists. Whereas James Mason Brewer ([1958] 1976) continued the tradition of celebratory collections inspired by Hurston ([1935] 1978), the most inuential theoretical debate in the United States was sparked by Richard M. Dorson (1968). Dorsons presentation of tales and his theories laid the underpinnings for a controversy over the origins of tales found among Africana people that would inuence the eld for decades. At the root of this debate are the same fundamental issues found in the writings of Harris, later evidenced in the theories advanced by Herskovits, and the ensuing objections posed by scholars such as Frazier: Who is the Negro? What is the nature of his culture and being? Is he an a-historical, New World invention of white American interests; or, is he a clever, castaway of Africa bearing cultural roots too profound to be completely destroyed even by the experiences of the Middle Passage, and subsequent enslavement? (e.g., Frazier 1963). One could read Dorsons emphatic objection to the idea of African origins not only as a desire to construct an identity for African Americans that relied exclusively on European inuences (that the black American is, in effect, a creation of white Americans), but also clearly as an hysterical impulse to deny any African inuence on the character of white Americans.

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If the 1950s posed a dilemma, the period beginning in the 1960s reected newly positioned scholars ready to accept that elements of black folklore are of African origin. This new approach posited that if African cultural elements could survive the middle passage, they could certainly survive northern migration and urbanization; that positive presentations of folk culture have tremendous potential to redress social ills; and that the climate of cultural celebration and afrmation is one in which they could participate. Social and political movements (e.g., civil rights, black power, womens liberation, black arts, and antiwar movements) set a tone of radicalism and social activism unparalleled by any other decade in U.S. history. In particular, it was during this period that America was forced to reconsider its attitudes and social policies toward African Americans, as black people in mass numbers began demanding equal rights and the dignity and respect accorded any other citizen of the commonwealth. Along with these demands came new, militant assertions of black identities, none of which were compatible with those thus far constructed for blacks by white America, and few of which easily t with images portrayed by folklorists. A new consciousness and symbolic reclamation of links to African heritage and culture on the part of black Americans and others in the diaspora lay at the heart of these social movements. Occurring simultaneously among liberal white Americans was an intense interest in Africana folk culture and a conscious symbolic use of black culture when addressing issues of freedom, cultural authenticity, and national morality, with which white America was confronted. Liberation movements abroad, including colonial societies gaining independence and nationhood, also contributed to the political ambience of this period. This social climate led to the creation of black studies in the university and comes closer than any other to what can be called a renaissance period in the production of research focusing on Africana people in the humanities. Like other disciplines (e.g., history, psychology, linguistics, sociology, and literature), folklore studies beneted greatly from the social climate; academic texts as well as performances in public sector folklore proliferated simultaneously. A number of signicant elements characterized scholarship in Africana folklore studies in the decades between 1960 and 2000, some of them being new developments and others constituting carryovers from earlier periods. New developments included (1) an emerging humanism that sought to redress some of the wrongs of American racism; (2) an expanded vision of Africana folklore to include folklore in urban settings (e.g., Abrahams 1963; Keil 1966; Jackson 1972; and Wepman, Newman, and Binderman 1976); (3) an inclusion of genres that had received little or no previous attention, including verbal forms such as toasting and traditions of material culture (e.g., Jackson 1974; Milner and Milner 1973; Vlach 1978, 1981; and Fry 1990); (4) inuences of performance theory and the ethnography of communication approach (e.g., Crowley 1966; Mitchell-Kernan 1971; Kochman 1972; Abrahams 1983; Davis 1985; Prahlad 1996 and 2001); and (5) inuences from the discipline of history that emphasized the synthesis of oral tradition into historical writings. The eld of history perhaps had the most dominant inuence on studies of Africana folklore beginning in the 1960s and extending up to the present moment. The recognition that traditional methodologies were insufcient for producing histories representative of all groups of Americans led to the inclusion of oral traditions and

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folklore in the portrayal and analysis of specic periods in American history, in particular, the era of slavery. Numerous texts began challenging conventional assumptions about southern history and about aspects of slavery and later generations of Africana people. These interests culminated in Lawrence W. Levines Black Culture and Black Consciousness (1977), which focuses primarily on folklore as the basis for constructing images of black life in the colonial and postcolonial periods and as a means by which to theorize elements of Africana culture. Albert J. Raboteaus Slave Religion (1978), which gives equal weight to folklore and printed sources such as diaries, sermons, letters, and historical studies, represents another major publication utilizing similar methodology. Historically based studies in Africana folklore tend to engage implicitly or explicitly some of the same issues raised earlier by Herskovits. Reecting the continued legacy of racism, these studies maintained underlying impulses to revise historical assumptions, to write Africana people into history and in the developing culture of the United States or other societies of the diaspora. These underpinnings are reected, for instance, in Gladys Marie Frys Night Riders (1975), one of the most outstanding of such works. The historical thrust is also evident in works that concentrate on other genres, offering a means through which to facilitate a focus on cultural identity (e.g., Ferris 1970; Morgan 1980; Palmer 1981; Roberts 1989; Dance 1987; Abrahams 1992; Turner 1993; and Conway 1995). Some approaches to Africana folklore from the 1960s to today that represent carryovers from earlier periods include (1) debate over origins of folklore items; (2) discussions of the dynamics between tradition and creativity; (3) presentations of folklore as literature; and (4) structural studies of certain genres. The debate over origins holds a unique position among these, for it is the only theoretical argument to which an entire collection of articles is devoted in Daniel Crowleys African Folklore in the New World (1977). The folklore as literature approach in Africana folklore, traced back to the publication of Harriss Uncle Remus ([1880] 1982), is implicit in the tradition of collections that began appearing in the 1960s. In many ways, collections came to signify, at the very least, claims for an authentic, viable cultureresponses to historically racist dismissals. Taken further, they embodied the emerging pan-African perspective that connected the political plight of differing New World African peoples by focusing on a commonality of cultural patterns. Thus, the interest in folklore expanded to include scholars in diverse elds concerned with New World Africans as well as artists of diverse mediums. The black arts movement in the United States, for example, which embraced folk culture as the basis for evolving a distinct literary aesthetic, can be viewed as a part of the period of romantic nationalism in black America. Langston Hughes, whose literary vision as early as the 1940s embodied the tenets of the black arts period, however, planted the seeds for this movement, and his The Book of Negro Folklore (Hughs and Bontemps 1958) can be said to have ushered in this period (Lawrence 2003). In the vein of scholars such as Herskovits and William Bascom (1981), Harold Courlanders research linked the traditions of Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States (1960, 1976; see also Spalding 1972 and Abrahams 1985). The most prolic outpouring of collections came from folklorist and literary scholar

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Daryl Dance, who published two excellently referenced collections (1978, 1985), followed by a collection of writings and folklore texts on black womens humor (1998) and a landmark anthology that drew from previous collections as well as from analytical texts and the authors own eld research (2002). Essentially, one comes away from the study of Africana folklore with a cubistic portrait of Africana people, reecting not so much their identities as the disposition of those for whom the black persons cultural identity is a preoccupation. Perhaps the moment has arrived when Africana folklore studies can evolve other axes of focus besides that of identity. Over the past 125 years, throughout the diaspora, scholars have amassed an enormous collection of texts, archives, and scholarly studies. Indeed, one cannot imagine the work done in Africana folklore without a sense of awe. But even with the enormity of texts in the eld, it is obvious there are at least as many traditions in the contemporary world that have not been collected or written about. The labor of theorizing, moreover, of evolving theory that facilitates critical analysis of primary materials in the eld, lags behind. It is this element that will advance the eld and enhance its stature in folklore studies and in the academy at large.

The Challenges
If it is to emerge as a dynamic and relevant eld, Africana folklore studies will have to confront and surmount a number of signicant obstacles. The rst involves the deeply embedded aversion to theory that has helped the eld of folklore studies retain its second-class citizenship in the academy and contributed to the persistent regard of folklore studies as largely descriptive by scholars in other elds. Working in an English department for the past fteen years has impressed on me the extent to which emerging scholars must engage contemporary theoretical discourses to be conversant in dialogues within the humanities, to have their work taken seriously, and to compete for academic positions. I include in this argument for theory the longstanding inuence of authors such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Mikhail Bahktin, Julia Kristeva, Judith Butler, and Hlne Cixous, and approaches such as postcolonialism, transnationalism, Afro-centrism, Marxism, critical race theory, lm theory, globalization theory, feminist theory, and queer theory. Of course, some of these may be more useful than others. One cannot, however, escape the fact that these theories dene contemporary discourses in the humanities, so that even if one chooses not to apply them, one still needs to engage them to the point of articulating their weaknesses or irrelevance to Africana folklore. Understandably, scholars in many parts of the diaspora working with folk materials do not rely so much on the theorists who dominate the humanities discourses in the United States. Rather, they are much more involved with theory that evolved in their particular region, which they believe to be better suited to their needs. Jamaican scholars, for example, are not nearly as inuenced by the postcolonial writings of Homi Bhabha or Edward Said as are scholars in the United States and, although they may nd Frantz Fanons work integral to their own, they may be inclined to consider him as something other than postcolonial. Hence, a second area of theory that should occupy those in Africana folklore is the type of theory inuencing schol-

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ars in places such as the Caribbean and South America. Conventionally, scholars of Africana folklore tend to follow the lead of those in the American folkloristic community that makes its own traditions of scholarship an exclusive focus, rather than viewing these traditions alongside differing research questions, goals, and methodologies of scholars in other countries and making the exploration of these differences the center of analytical critique. As a result, all too often scholarship in the United States lacks an awareness of theoretical developments among scholars in other countries that have obvious overlaps with the materials we collect and analyze. Beyond an engagement with established theory in the United States and with emerging theory within postcolonial societies abroad, scholars in Africana folklore will need to evolve theory particularly suited to the materials, problems, and research challenges of the eld. Up until now, scholars have been content to borrow from whatever theories have been current in folklore studies or anthropology without questioning the extent to which these approaches might be (in)appropriate for their own aims. The most disturbing aspect of this history is that the discourse of western folklore studies emerged out of colonial discourse and has not yet adequately interrogated the impact of this origin on the study of materials from postcolonial subjectsunlike its sister eld, anthropology. For example, those in Africana folklore have yet to critique the claim that folklore studies should be considered a social science or deliberate the inuence of this claim on actual studies. Although the move from folklore toward folkloristics, or toward the eld as social science is understandable, reecting the urge to be considered a legitimate area of research, the claim rings hollow when one looks for evidence of scientic research in the eld. The claim is complicated by the implicit assumption that the materials and methods are more primary than are the human elements, which recall earlier discourses in anthropology that made possible its collusion with imperial agendas. The term folklore is saturated with colonial narratives that contain deeply ingrained notions of class and race. As such, the term folkloristics can be read as an effort to grant the eld a new identity, to purge it of its colonialist history, without rst acknowledging or interrogating the nature and impact of that history on the development of the eld. It is certainly not my argument that Africana folklore studies in general would not benet from more rigorous research methodsquite the contrary. One of numerous developments that would help the eld become more relevant and perhaps even invaluable to other disciplines in both the humanities and soft sciences is the use of quantitative research methodologies. Offering generalities about Africana folk traditions perpetuates notions of homogeneity, a mark of colonial discourses that tend to involve misrepresentations in one form or another. For instance, to assert that a tale or a folk belief has currency among Africana people and then to draw various conclusions based on these materials has limited value to scholars in psychology, history, education, sociology, medicine, political science, family studies, or other disciplines in which scholars are concerned with Africana people. On the other hand, to assert that the tale is known by a specic percent of people in a particular region, to identify the attitudes those people have toward it, to dene the ages and other social factors identifying those people, and to propose a theoretical analysis of the

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tales function and meanings relative to these particulars would be of larger benet. That is, studies inuenced by the basic tenets of science (e.g., identifying a research problem or hypothesis, gathering quantiable data, testing the hypothesis, and drawing working conclusions) are greatly needed in Africana folklore, yet these generally are not the kind of studies undertaken by those who embrace the term folkloristics or who argue that folklore studies should be considered a social science. The number and sophistication of studies in Africana folklore have grown greatly since the 1960s, providing us insights into diverse forms as well as offering abundant evidence of the vitality, beauty, and functional importance of many different types of folklore. In conrming the impulse to legitimate Africana culture, however, these studies taken as a whole do reect signicant weaknesses. For example, studies in folklore have historically focused on groups marginalized by geography, class, and ethnicity, with Africana folklore studies following suit. Indeed, it is because of this fundamental orientation that Africana people have received initial and continued attention from folklorists. This orientation, however, has also inuenced the kind of groups selected for study within Africana culture. The term folk insinuates a closeness to oral tradition and behaviors more distinct from the mainstream, and for that reason the term became an implicit marker of Negro-ness, African American ness, or blackness. That is, from the many diverse populations and subgroups of Africana people constituting urban and rural landscapes throughout the diaspora, folklore studies has offered glimpses into relatively fewbasically those that tend to further an image of group homogeneity. Undoubtedly, this practice sheds light on the ambivalence of black intellectuals in other elds toward folklore studies, because the conventionally conceived term folk can lead to stereotypical notions and generalizations about Africana people. If one compares, for instance, the number of folklore collections of northern, urban Africana people with those of southern, rural groups, the bias of which I speak here becomes apparent. Obviously, some Africana people are assumed to be more folk than others. There are no studies of folklore among black professionals, for instance, and thus, few portraits of specic individuals in the professional, middle-, or upper-class worlds as bearers of black folk tradition or employing folklore ritually or casually in their day-to-day lives. One could get the impression, especially from works written about populations of the Caribbean or Latin or South America, that there are no middle- or upper-class black people with formal educations. This marked absence reects the general vision of the eld and should invite scholars to question the extent to which ideological trends within American folklore are suitable for studies in Africana folklore. We should also note that despite the expansion of genres and behaviors folklorists have collected and analyzed, an overwhelming emphasis on male elements of the culture(s) remains. Awareness of this aspect of American folklore studies has increased, with numerous texts directly addressing this problem (e.g., Jordan and Kal cik 1985; Behar and Gordon 1995; Farrer 1975). Few, however, have examined the impact and implications of this male bias specically for Africana folklore studies; thus, many gender-related questions remain unposed and unexplored in Africana folklore. Are there genres exclusive to women, for example, that operate in spaces beyond the domestic sphere? If so, what are they? When and how are they performed? What are

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some of the communicative strategies employed by women in specic social contexts? What are some of the unexamined inuences on gendered performative practices, and what are some of the meanings operating in womens speech events and oral texts? Similarly, folklorists in Africana studies have not engaged the ideas of feminism (especially black feminism) or womanism (the Afro-centric response to feminism) that have enjoyed such a commanding presence in other elds such as literary analysis. In fact, one is hard pressed to think of contemporary, full-length, feminist or womanist studies of black folklore. If the eld of Africana folklore studies is to continue to advance and grow in the twenty-rst century, these issues, and a number of others, will need to be more conscientiously addressed. A theoretically numbing aspect of studies in this eld involves implicit assumptions about racial identity. Going back historically to Harriss Uncle Remus and moving forward, we nd a pervading tendency to imagine black informants as somehow representative of the entire race. Contained in this essentializing mode of presentation is the idea that there is a monolithic African-American race (culture) with identiable characteristics, a category into which every black person will t. Inherent in the application of terms such as the Negro, or even African American, is the implicit assumption of race as the overriding marker of identity for all individuals within the group. The complex elements of identity and the ways in which individuals negotiate diverse elements of their identities were explored by folklorists writing on ethnicity and folklore in the 1980s and 1990s (e.g., Georges and Stern 1982; Brown and Mussell 1984; Stern and Cicala 1991). Although certainly engaged by scholars in the Caribbean, explorations of racial identities within Africana groups is rare in the United States. Topics of how individuals conceive of and negotiate aspects of their identities need to be explored extensively and theoretically by authors in the United States, along with questions about how folklore functions in this negotiation. The absence of such discussions suggests by implication that, whereas individuals in other ethnic groups have choices and, in fact, are taken to be individuals, Africana peoples have no such choices: blackness is still their primary identier. Put another way, it is assumed that all people who look black must relate similarly to their blackness and that they all must consider blackness the primary marker of their identities. Hence, the very concept of race must be more fully examined if Africana folklore is to progress and join the dialogues taking place in other disciplines. Unfortunately, one of the few publications in folklore studies to directly address race relationships actually dismisses critical race theory, virtually resting the blame for continued racial disharmony on those who theorize about it (Fine and Turner 2001). Martin Favors Authentic Blackness exemplies a more productive approach, positing that the criteria for assessing black authenticity among whites and blacks since the early twentieth century has rested on ones proximity to being folk, that is, rural, southern, uneducated, and so forth (1999). Favor goes on to problematize these assumptions; for instance, middle-class or educated African Americans are not as black, and are, therefore, less authentic, interesting, or loyal to the race. Likewise, Hazel Carby (1998) examines the role that W. E. B. DuBoiss The Souls of Black Folk ([1903] 1997) played in formulating the concept of blackness, basing much of DuBoiss conceptu-

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alization on ideas of the folk. Furthermore, Carby chronicles the impact of this ideology in terms of how folk concepts are utilized by black men in their self-presentations and identity formations in the context of a racist society. That such dialogues take place in literary and cultural studies, history, and other elds with no input from folklorists or, at the least, from folklorists in the United States, is unfortunate. It is certainly difcult to imagine why folklorists would not want to participate in such dialogues that revolve around materials and concepts more central to our discipline than to any other. Additionally, if a eld, as I have suggested here, will emerge and thrive, there needs to be more reference works. In 1978 Roger Abrahams and John Szwed published one of the most extensive bibliographies of Africana folklore available, Afro-American Folk Culture. But no carefully researched reference works organized topically or theoretically has emerged from the mass of resources represented. In an electronic age, there should be collaborations among scholars of diverse continents to create reference works and accessible archives on Africana folk culture which would be particularly helpful and necessary when considering the range of languages in which materials might be found (e.g., Francophone, Anglophone, Spanish, and so forth). Undoubtedly, such work will be tedious, time consuming, and garner less academic acclaim than other kinds of projects, such as single-authored books. But the value of these projects to the emergence of the eld is, I would imagine, undeniable. In this regard, Laura Jarmons careful attention to motifs in black narratives and her efforts to delineate performance modalities is especially exciting (2003). This type of study, as well as a four-volume encyclopedia set on African-American folklore (Prahlad, forthcoming 2005), will, one hopes, inspire other studies and reference works in this vein. I have mentioned a number of theoretical approaches but would like to suggest two in particular that seem well suited for Africana folklore studiespostcolonialism and transnationalism. Undoubtedly, both invite disciplinary self-critique, a historical interrogation of the discipline in light of colonialism and other political forces that have helped to shape the western world and its academic discourses. The general resistance within the eld of folklore studies to engage this kind of self-reexive analysis may help explain the absence of such discussions in writings on Africana folklore as well. For instance, at least since the 1980s, anthropologists have explored relationships between colonialism, politics of empire, early travel writing, and ethnography. Consider, for example, Margaret Hodgens Early Anthropology in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1964), James Clifford and George Marcuss Writing Culture (1986), Mary Louise Pratts Imperial Eyes (1992), and Bernth Lindforss Africans on Stage (1999). Yet these issues have remainedat least in terms of full-length studies by folklorists in the United Statesbeyond the pale of folkloristic inquiry. This absence is nowhere more glaring than in Africana folklore, an area of research inherently ripe for postcolonial analysis. Engagement with such theory would enable Africana folklore to become a voice among a diverse number of other disciplinary persuasions, helping to establish the eld as an area of rigorous methodology and analysis. It would also help to reframe some of the historical debates within the eld, generating new kinds of research questions. One great puzzle of the twentieth cen-

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tury is how a eld could be so concerned with people and their cultural materials that exist largely because of slavery, yet so seldom theorize the relationships of power evolving out of colonialism that continue to characterize the lives of those people and their traditions. Moreover, postcolonial perspectives offer a framework by which folklorists may link their concerns to those shared by scholars in other elds focused on people of African descent. As an approach specically focused on the types of social and political issues of formerly colonized people, postcolonialism offers scholars in Africana folklore an opportunity to contribute meaningfully to dialogues that will remain relevant far into the future. Unfortunately, folklorists are rarely invited to participate in most regional, national, and international fora having to do with the welfare of black people, whereas experts in such elds as medicine, psychology, sociology, political science, history, and education are routinely asked to contribute. Does the eld of folklore studies really have nothing to offer to discussions of the increasingly widespread AIDS epidemic in Africa and throughout the diaspora, for instance? To deliberations on urbanization, hunger, failed educations, and poverty? To debates on the crises among people of African descent in physical and psychological health and the mass incarceration of black males? Or has folklore studies simply not posed the kinds of questions and undertaken the kinds of rigorous research that would yield information relevant to these conversations? Certainly, as Alan Dundes has argued so concisely in the title of one of his books, folklore matters (1989). Methodologies and analytical perspectives that demonstrate how the consideration of folklore is critical to discussions of the welfare of black people must be developed if our discipline is to be taken seriously by those outside it. This would involve including more sociological information in studies of specic artists and communities, but also allowing this information to play a more central role in the analysis of folklore. It would mean, perhaps, moving past the folkloristic aversion to methodologies involving quantiable data, as well as an extended consideration of what it means to label folklore studies a social science. Many of the same points can be made about transnational studies. Concerns of those writing from transnational perspectives are intricately connected to issues that have garnered the attention of folklorists in Africana studies since the nineteenth century. It should be obvious by now that a more sophisticated framework for globally conceptualizing the connections among people of African descent is needed; conceptual models tied to regional communities are simply insufcient for studies in a globalized age. Indeed, a global perspective invites closer scrutiny of many fundamental assumptions upon which research in Africana folklore has often rested, and I suggest that such reection will be productive. Transnational perspectives, in fact, are conveniently aligned with theories advanced by Herskovits (e.g., 1941), but they go far beyond. New perspectives are concerned with the uid, mutual exchange of cultural elements between groups separated by national and political boundaries but that engage in continuous communication and sharing of traditions in a modern, technological age. This perspective requires that folklorists working with Africana materials be familiar with traditions and groups from around the diaspora. As such, studies such as Paul Gilroys The Black Atlantic (1993), which theorizes a modern

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black Atlantic culture and explores Africana elements in cultural exchanges among differing ethnic groups in various western countries (e.g., the United Kingdom and the United States), should be of vital interest to folklorists working with diasporic materials. Furthermore, the overwhelmingly positive reception of Gilroys study demonstrates the potential for folklorists to impact a wide range of disciplines and inuence trends in academic theory. Transnational perspectives in many ways challenge some of the basic ideas of folklore studies, for instance, those notions having to do with tradition, authorship, transmission, face-to-face communication, local communities, and small groups. It is worth pondering how folklore studies may reorient itself in a future world in which fewer people on earth are isolated, as the marginalized become ever closer to the center, as the center becomes increasingly difcult to identify, and as boundaries between national and ethnic identities become increasingly more uid. Until now, African American, Afro-Brazilian, or Afro-Cuban have denoted black folklore, by and among black people living in a particular country. But what of the thorough infusion of black folklore into mainstream societies through mass media and integration? Africana folklore should include not only folklore among groups of African heritage, but also folklore derived from or given denitive shapes and modalities by those groups. For instance, the African-derived banjo should be considered an example of Africana folklore even when found in white American bluegrass or country and western music. Imagine, by way of another illustration, a Senegalese freestyle poet performing before a crowd of several hundred in an enclave of New World African people in London. We might not typically consider this an example of Africana folklore; freestyle/rap poetry, however, is a performance genre that has clearly been shaped by Africana culture and should be a legitimate subject of study in whatever context it might appear. For another example, consider the biracial child of a black American and Vietnamese immigrant who becomes a storyteller among the African-derived peers in his army unit (the tales taken from the repertoires of both parents). Or the white American in an interracial marriage who becomes the tradition bearer of the black familys legends. Such scenarios will become more and more common as regional communities around the globe register the impact of technology and mobilization. In truth, even scholarship in Africana studies in the United States has yet to evolve ideological, methodological, and analytical tools to deal adequately with the changing social realities of northern migration or integration. And now, movements of migration back to the South, international travel and communication, and globalization are upon us. If studies in Africana folklore are to gain a position of inuence and remain relevant in the context of contemporary scholarship in the humanities and social sciences, it simply cannot afford the kind of romanticization that has been such a key component of folkoristics in the past (i.e., nineteenth-century notions of folk and lore). In many ways, the suggestions offered here address those issues identied as fundamental in the earliest writings on black folklore, which have persisted over time. Black identity, for example, has remained a key element, either directly or indirectly (e.g., the politicization of folkloric presentations and the tendency to essentialize Africana peoples). I argue for theoretical approaches that complicate understandings

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of identity, viewing African American, African Jamaican, African Brazilian, and so forth more as languages than as speakers. Approaching Africana folklore studies from such perspectives can help to dislodge the eld from the attack/defend, disparage/celebrate oppositions that have characterized its development, inviting different modes of inquiry previously not possible. This is not to suggest that the analytical approaches used until now should be dismissed (e.g., ethnography of communication, performative, historical, and structural approaches). I contend, however, that these orientations by themselves are insufcient for advancing Africana folklore studies.

Rising to These Challenges: The Articles in This Issue

The articles contained in this issue take steps toward addressing some of the issues identied above, indicating that studies on Africana folklore are indeed moving toward these kinds of dialogues. As a group, these articles (1) reect transnational perspectives; (2) explore new kinds of relationships between folklore and politics; (3) offer new perspectives on intra-racial issues among Africana people; (4) expand our ideas of African American; and (5) engage the impact of technology in processes of community maintenance and social identity. Audrey Kerrs work, The Paper Bag Principle: Of the Myth and the Motion of Colorism, explores relatively new ground by focusing on a tradition of intragroup racism, expressed in what she terms complexion lore, specically, racial purity tests (i.e., the paper bag test) that have been historically used to exclude darker-skinned African Americans from membership in black social organizations. Tying together history and folklore, she provides a historic overview of Washington, D.C., and expands to include other urban regions in the United States as they developed from the period of slavery. Kerr explores the spaces allotted for black people within these communities in terms of the emergence of a caste system within African-American culture mirroring that found in the dominant white society. In Eastward to the Islands: The Other Diaspora, Lee Haring expands our vision of African American (or, at least, of the diaspora) by insisting on the inclusion of geographical spaces in the Indian as well as the Atlantic Ocean. While engaging previous scholarship on the origin of tales, Haring offers new insights as he compares tales from Maritius, Runion, Seychelles, and Rodrigues with versions collected from Africana people in the United States. Furthermore, he discusses Indian Ocean signifying, the corollary to signifying found in the United States, and the ways in which this rhetorical practice and the selection of tales and motifs in the Eastward Islands reect attitudes of these African-derived peoples toward the dominant power structure. Cristina Snchez-Carreteros Santos y Misterios as Channels of Communication in the Diaspora: Afro-Dominican Religious Practices Abroad offers a compelling analysis of the changing role of Dominican saints to meet the needs of an increasingly transnational community. The article covers numerous key issues in Dominican life that inuence the contemporary roles played by saints and healers. For instance, there are new attitudes toward ethnic identity at odds with the ways in which Dominicans have identied themselves. One of the major contributions made by Sn-

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chez-Carreteros work is the exploration of how immigrants relocating from the Dominican Republic to countries in Europe or North America have reshaped the logistical and symbolic relationships to saints and healers. Instead of addressing some of the concerns that may have characterized life in smaller communities, contemporary saints are asked to help obtain visas, nd jobs abroad, and recover from the traumas of relocation. In the process, Snchez-Carretero explores how migrants mythologize their experiences and examines the importance of such mythologizing in maintaining connections with communities and loved ones left behind. The role of lived mythology is further discussed by Michael Largey in Recombinant Mythology and the Alchemy of Memory: Occide Jeanty, Ogou, and Jean-Jacques Dessalines in Haiti. Presenting the concept recombinant mythology, Largey persuasively argues that the presence of mythological (religious) gures can pervade a culture so deeply that historical persons become recreated in light of characteristics associated with those gures. In this particular case, his discussion focuses on how President Hippolite, composer Occide Jeanty, and legendary general Jean-Jacques Dessalines have become cultural heroes remembered in relation to characteristics of the Vodou lwa, Ogou. One of Largeys prominent concerns involves the way in which mythology operates as a contemporary social force within a given society, coloring peoples interpretive lenses and inuencing the tides of political movements, while ultimately inuencing social policy and quality of life as well. Hence, mythology continues to shape societies in very real and practical ways. Largeys contribution invites us to reect on how these ndings in Haiti might apply equally to our own societies, in terms of the inuence our own mythologies have on domestic and foreign affairs. In Repeat Performance: Dancing DiDinga with the Lost Boys of South Sudan, Felicia Faye McMahon discusses the song traditions of DiDinga men who have sought refuge in the United States, offering insights into a cultural group and their folklore that are relatively unknown to most western scholars. Beyond simply bringing The Lost Boys to our attention, this work examines the crises of identity confronting this immigrant group, revealing how their song tradition serves in negotiating their trauma. McMahons focus on the traditions of a refugee group illustrates the necessity for a transnational perspective, offering an opportunity to pose questions different from many commonly constructed in studies about Africana folklore. In this case, we are witnesses to an emergent tradition that draws from those of the South Sudanwhere the young men were bornbut that includes new elements and functions within a radically different cultural context. Some of these concerns overlap, in fact, with those of the other articles herein. Moreover, with McMahons work we get a glimpse into the processes through which elements of songs and performances are created and negotiated by the individual and the group. The articles included in this special issue represent some scholars making solid contributions and advancing our understanding of materials and behaviors from diverse parts of the diaspora. However we criticize preceding generations of authors, we are always brought back to the intense love for and commitment to Africana culture that has provided the foundation of work upon which later scholars can build. It will undoubtedly take a new generation with equal passion and respect for these

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diverse cultures to carry the eld into the future and infuse it with new visions. One hopes that these articles will generate dialogue and a renewed interest among both established and younger scholars, so that by the time there is another special issue of JAF devoted to this topic something more recognizable as a eld will exist, with exciting, rigorous, innovative, and cross-disciplinary theoretical and critical debates.

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